Video: Drawing basic shapes

In this exercise, we are going to create our first piece of artwork. Specifically, we are going to use those custom guides that we created in the previous exercise in order to instruct a kind of American star motif using Illustrator's Shape tools. We are going to start off by creating three red stripes each of which will represent using a rectangle. So I am going to drop down here to my Shape tools and if you have been working along with me, you will probably see the Ellipse tool. Go ahead and click and hold in order to bring up the Shape tool flyout menu and then go ahead and choose the Rectangle tool which has a keyboard shortcut of M.

This course is a streamlined introduction to Adobe's popular vector drawing application. Expert Deke McClelland shows how to create professional-quality illustrations for print and electronic output, in the shortest time possible. The course covers the basics of setting up artboards, formatting type, drawing and combing path outlines, and applying dynamic effects.

Drawing basic shapes

In this exercise, we are going to create our first piece of artwork.Specifically, we are going to use those custom guides that we created in theprevious exercise in order to instruct a kind of American star motif usingIllustrator's Shape tools.We are going to start off by creating three red stripes each of which willrepresent using a rectangle.So I am going to drop down here to my Shape tools and if you have been workingalong with me, you will probably see the Ellipse tool.Go ahead and click and hold in order to bring up the Shape tool flyout menu andthen go ahead and choose the Rectangle tool which has a keyboard shortcut of M.

And the M, by the way, stands for the word Marquee.Now I am going to go ahead and draw from this location right there.Notice that I have positioned my cursor two guidelines down and one guidelineinto the right and I can see this little green word intersect.That's a Smart Guide label that's telling me that my cursor writes exactly atthe intersection of two guidelines.If you're not seeing the green Smart Guides then go up to the View menu and makesure Smart Guides is turned on. All right!I am going to go ahead and draw the rectangle so that it takes up nearly theentire width of the page just one guideline in and its two guidelines tall.

And I went ahead and created my rectangle from the left to the right side of the screen.You can work in the opposite direction if you like.Bear in mind that I'm left-handed so I sometimes do things littledifferently than other folks.The next couple of rectangles, we will be creating are going to be the samesize so we could just go ahead and duplicate the existing rectangle to a couple of new positions.However, because we have all these guidelines at our disposal it's just as easyto draw each of the rectangles from scratch.So I'll go ahead and draw another rectangle like so, and then a third rectangledown here in the lower portion of the artboard.

Now I want to go ahead and select all three of these rectangles by going upto the Select menu and choosing the All command to select all three of those shapes.Remember that I've locked down my guidelines, so I am selecting just therectangles and none of the guides.Next, go up to the Control panel underneath the menu bar here, and click on thisvery first color swatch.It should appear white for you.That represents the fill that is the interior of each one of these shapes, allthree of which are currently white.

Clicking on that swatch brings up the Swatches panel.Go ahead and click that CMYK red swatch in order to fill those stripes with red. All right!The next shape we want to create is the circle at the center of the artboardand we are going to exactly align our circle to the existing circular guide, byclicking and holding on the Rectangle tool and choosing the Ellipse tool fromthe flyout menu, and then I want you to position your cursor like so, so thatyou are intersecting not only that first horizontal guide in the artboard butyou'll also see a green vertical line that lines up with the left side of the elliptical guide.

Then go ahead and drag like so and as you drag to constrain this shape to acircle, go ahead and press and hold the Shift key, and then you'll eventuallysee this vertical green line that's lined up with the right side of the circular guide.Then go ahead and release in order to create a big red circle.And the idea is once you change the color of an object that becomes the defaultcolor for the next object you draw.I am going to go up here to the Control panel, click on that red swatch andI'm going to select a shade of blue specifically this guy right there, C 100, M 95, Y=5 and K=0.

CMYK, by the way, stands for the primary printing inks which are cyan,magenta, yellow and black.Black being the key color that's why it's K.I'll go ahead and click on blue in order to select it.Then I will press the Escape key in order to hide that panel and the final shapewe need to create is a star.I will go ahead and click and hold on the Ellipse tool, here inside the toolboxthen I will choose a Star tool from the flyout menu.And you always draw stars from the center outward inside of Illustrator, sostart at the center of the artboard and you should see a little green wordcenter, that's telling you that you're aligned to the center of in this case the circle.

And then go ahead and drag outward, like so.A couple of things about the Star tool.First of all, if you press the Up Arrow key you'll add points to the star;if you press the Down Arrow key, you'll remove points from the star.In all, we want a total five points.Also notice that the sides don't really line up with each other.So to create a perfect five point in American star, you press and hold theAlt key or the Option key on the Mac and then those opposite sides areexactly in alignment.Keep that Alt or Option key down to make the star straight up and down so thatit's not at this angle here.

Press and hold the Shift key.So you should have both the Shift and Alt keys down on the PC, the Shift andOption keys down on the Mac.When you get your star about this big go ahead and release the mouse button andthen release the keys.Next, go back up to the Control panel, click on that blue swatch and change thatFill Color to White.Finally, I want you to go ahead and press Ctrl+A or Command+A on the Mac andwhat we need to do is get rid of the outlines around each one of our shapeswhich are known as the strokes.

And the second swatch in up here in the Control panel represents the stroke.Go ahead and click on it to bring up that Swatches panel once again and thistime click on the first swatch which is None and that goes ahead and gets rid of those strokesThen in order to deselect everything inside the illustration, you can either goto the Select menu and choose that Deselect command but I recommend you rememberthat keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+A, Command+Shift+A on the Mac.And finally I'm going to hide my guides by going up to the View menu,choosing the Guides command and then choosing Hide Guides and that is ourfinished illustration.

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

Already a member ?

Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
Learn more

Upgrade to our Annual Premium Membership today and get even more value from your lynda.com subscription:

“In a way, I feel like you are rooting for me. Like you are really invested in my experience, and want me to get as much out of these courses as possible this is the best place to start on your journey to learning new material.”— Nadine H.

Thanks for signing up.

We’ll send you a confirmation email shortly.

Sign up and receive emails about lynda.com and our online training library:

new course releases

newsletter

general communications

special notices

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.

Keep up with news, tips, and latest courses with emails from lynda.com.

Sign up and receive emails about lynda.com and our online training library:

new course releases

newsletter

general communications

special notices

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.